Harland does a great job of explaining the nuts and bolts of this often overlooked program. His account of the intricacies of mastering both rendezvous and EVA demonstrate that without Gemini, Apollo just doesn't happen.

Many great photos accompany the text, and it is too bad that Apogee decided against a CD with this book. Highly recommended.

heng44

I know, they are my photos!

Seriously, the book is a great account of the exciting Gemini missions. David Harland uses a lot of the air-to-ground conversations to bring the missions alive. Highly recommended.

Fra Mauro

I just finished reading this book from the Apogee series and I highly recommend it. It not the first book you should read about Gemini since it is a bit detailed and assumes you know something about the program but it is a definite read.

collocation

I would concur, I read this book several years ago, a bit technical, but highly recommended.

garymilgrom

I just finished this book and concur with the above reviews. This is the best book I've read about Project Gemini and how it paved the way for succesfull Apollo flights. The book concentrates on the operations behind the flights. These show how NASA became familiar with tight launch windows, EVA problems and most importantly rendezvous procedures over the time of these flights. The book does a very good job of describing complex events like different forms of rendezvous and how NASA was doing things in later flights that they never would have attempted without the experience gained in earlier ones.

While most of us are familiar with how the Apollo flights progressed step by step to their ultimate goal, this book shows how Project Gemini used the same processes to build a solid understanding of orbital operations and long duration flight for American manned spacecraft.

hermit

Watch out for a book about the Gemini spacecraft by David Woods and David Harland that's coming out this summer from Haynes publishing in the UK. It is half technical exposition of the systems, and half mission reviews. Sort of 'How NASA Learned to Fly in Space' meets 'How Apollo Flew to the Moon'.

GoesTo11

quote:Originally posted by hermit:...coming out this summer from Haynes publishing in the UK.

Can I assume that's another in the Haynes Manual series, like we've seen for Apollo, ISS, Shuttle, etc.? Those are fun books...looking forward to one on Gemini!

hermit

Yes, the Haynes Manual series.

cspg

Trying to steal my "job"?

Haven't found it anywhere.

wdw

Our Gemini Haynes Manual is still very much in production. It's in a good place but Haynes have yet to announce it officially.